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Saturday, March 19, 2016

At
long last, I have persuaded the group to try a book by one of my favorite
authors: Brandon Sanderson. Warbreaker uses a magical system based upon color,
which I think is unique in the Fantasy genre. It also features a reanimated zombie squirrel
and a sword with a burning desire to kill things. Our second read is The Thirteenth
Tale by Diane Setterfield, set in the world of writing.

They
are now both on the Nooks.

The Thirteenth Tale
by Diane Setterfield

Biographer Margaret Lea returns one night to find
a letter on her steps. It is a hand-written request from one of Britain’s most
prolific and well-loved novelists. Vida Winter, gravely ill, wants to recount
her life story before it is too late, and she wants Margaret to be the one to
capture her history.

While pondering whether to accept the task of
recording Miss Winter’s personal story, Margaret begins to read her father’s
rare copy of Miss Winter’sThirteen Tales of Change and
Desperation. She is spellbound by the stories and confused when she
realizes the book only contains twelve stories. Where is the thirteenth tale?
Intrigued, Margaret agrees to meet Miss Winter and act as her biographer.

Warbreaker by Brandon
Sanderson

Since she was born, Vivenna has been raised to
marry the God-King Susebron who rules the city of Hallandren. Siri has always
been surplus to requirements and has been able to do as she wanted.

Lightsong is uneasy, not knowing why he is a
God or what he is really meant to do with his powers. Vasher is a gruff man
with his own goals, condemned to carry Nightblood, an evil sword that can talk
and really, really enjoys killing people. Vasher is also adept at manipulating
Breath, the magical currency of this world where color, magic and life are
intrinsically linked together.

Saturday, March 5, 2016

John Perry did
two things on his 75th birthday. First he visited his wife's grave. Then he
joined the army.

The good news is that humanity finally made it into interstellar space. The bad
news is that planets fit to live on are scarce and alien races willing to fight
us for them are common. Everybody knows that when you reach retirement age, you
can join the Colonial Defense Force. They don't want young people; they want
people who carry the knowledge and skills of decades of living. You'll be taken
off Earth and never allowed to return. You'll serve two years at the front. And
if you survive, you'll be given a generous homestead stake of your own, on one
of our hard-won colony planets.

* * *

I am ashamed to admit that I was not aware of
Mr Scalzi’s writing until the publication of Redshirts a few years ago. It
sounded like great fun and I added it to my enormous ‘To Be Read’ list in the
hopes of finding time to read it eventually. I suggested it to my husband, who
thoroughly enjoyed the audiobook, so it seemed like a good choice for
maintaining my sanity during the highly repetitive tagging of the Great
Closedown. I have to admit that my colleagues got rather annoyed with me
chortling away to myself, but I thought it was hilarious and moved on to various
other titles in his back catalog. Whilst I have not come across one that I did
not enjoy, Old Man’s War seemed perfect for the NYOBG ladies: funny and
action-packed but full of thought-provoking premises and interesting ethical
dilemmas.

I know that Sci-Fi can be a little geeky and
overburdened by scientific sounding mumbo-jumbo as it tries to justify faster
than light travel and the other necessities of interplanetary colonization. Mr
Scalzi turns this on its head by pointedly not explaining any of the advanced
technology that we see in anything other than the broadest of terms. He even
suggests that much of it is beyond humanity’s level of scientific development
and has been ‘borrowed’ from alien species and then reverse engineered. This
allows us to simply go along with the story and not worry too much about how
John and his fellow soldiers do what they do or go where they go.

Speaking of whom, John is a rather likeable
narrator. He has a streak of sarcasm and is often quite flippant, which
reminded me a great deal of my paternal grandfather. He was an old guy who
always had a twinkle in his eye and a surprisingly wicked sense of humor, even
after losing his wife quite suddenly. He was lost in his grief for several
years, but, just like John, he gradually came through it and lived almost ten
years on his own after her death. I am fairly certain that he would have
seriously considered joining the CDF and I am quite sure that he would have
enjoyed the prospect of a body without knee pain and an enlarged prostate!

We do meet a variety of other characters,
although many of them only make brief appearances before their faces are eaten
off by one alien or another. John’s initial clique from his first few weeks in
the CDF designate themselves ‘The Old Farts’ and we follow their careers to a
certain extent as John hears about their adventures, but we are mostly
concerned with John and his experiences. The other characters that really
distinguish themselves are Master Sergeant Ruiz, who prides himself on despising
all of the new recruits when they start basic training, and Jane Sagan, who I
will not discuss because she is a major spoiler if you want to read the book.

In fact the only thing about John that I
found a little annoying was his prodigious ability to outperform his
colleagues, even when he is working with Special Forces. He is amazingly lucky
and unbelievably successful as a soldier. This is especially intriguing because
of his previous life as a writer of tag-lines for an advertizing company: not
what I would imagine is the ideal preparation for becoming a super soldier. I
am not sure if this is unconscious Mary-Sueism, or a deliberate attempt to
highlight how immortal most lead characters are in these types of stories. John
certainly is the perfect CDF recruit, but I guess that the book would be a lot
less interesting if he died on his first mission or did nothing more exciting
than working in the CDF version of the mail room.

Of course, we have no real way of knowing if
John’s experience is massively extraordinary. During basic training, the
recruits are told that most of them will not survive their minimum two year
term of service and that certainly seems to be true for many of the characters
that John encounters. Perhaps most of those who finish their minimum term are
as skilled or lucky as he seems to be. In many ways it seems that luck is the
most important factor at play as we see plenty of excellent people die through
no particular fault of their own. Some even die because they simply do not identify
the potential danger of the alien life that they encounter.

We do meet some interesting, and believable,
aliens. Mr Scalzi goes beyond the highly unlikely humans with bumpy foreheads and
there is certainly no suggestion of inter-species romance. Indeed, the most
human race that we encounter are only 1 inch high, which seems like an
insurmountable height difference, no matter how much a pair might love each
other! As well as alien bodies, we are shown totally alien psychologies, religions
and spiritual beliefs. This is especially evident with the Consu, who engage in
ritualized battles to consecrate planets. They are highly xenophobic and
consider themselves contaminated once they have been in contact with an alien
species. This causes them to conduct meetings with aliens using only convicted
criminals, who are killed after the contact, incinerated and then the ashes are
shot into a black hole. As I said, they are very sensitive about staying ‘pure’
. . .

All of this is fun and entertaining, but I do
not want to leave you with the impression that this title has no commentary on
the human condition. The CDF’s decision to use geriatrics to fight the good
fight is certainly very interesting. Firstly, it makes us wonder about our own
choice in that situation. Would we choose an extended period of old age, with
failing health, or would we be tempted to have a second chance? I do not want
to discuss how the CDF overcomes the physical failings of its recruits, but the
Old Farts certainly have quite a lot of fun when the process is over. Secondly,
it goes against our assumption that it is the young who sacrifice their lives
for the good of society. The CDF claims that old recruits are more
psychological stable and also have more understanding of what precisely they
are fighting to protect. Whilst most of the colonials are actually from the
overpopulated countries on Earth, like India and Norway (for some reason that I
cannot understand), the CDF recruits that we follow are all from the US.
However, they have all experienced family, friends and love: all the things
that they know will be destroyed if they allow the aggressive alien species to
run free through the galaxy. I am not sure that this is true, but it certainly
a very thought-provoking idea.

In short, I can thoroughly recommend this as
a witty and interesting journey into Sci-Fi. It is action-packed and mercifully
light on scientific explanations whilst using possible advances in technology
to explore some interesting ethical dilemmas. Plus it has a scene with soldiers
stomping on inch-high aliens!